We're starting off this week with an exciting new essay by Jacob Edmond, the editor of PennSound's Kamau Brathwaite author page. Published in the journal archipelagos, "Teaching without a Text: Close Listening to Kamau Brathwaite’s Digital Audio Archive" begins with a simple, reciprocal proposition: "new media technologies — from the tape recorder to the computer — enabled Kamau Brathwaite's revolutionary poetic approach; digital technologies likewise enable us to study and teach his groundbreaking work in new ways."
Edmond makes the argument that "that teaching and studying Brathwaite should begin with the audible word not the written text and that digital audio archives and platforms can play a key role in enabling this approach," noting that "digital audio archives such as PennSound and the Poetry Archive allow students and scholars to approach Brathwaite's work by listening closely to a wide range of sound recordings." He concludes: "This essay demonstrates the utility of this close listening approach by taking advantage of the digital platform of archipelagos journal to interweave its text with Brathwaite's recorded voice. It not only demonstrates the value of approaching Brathwaite's work through digital sound recordings but also argues for a larger overturning of critical, pedagogical, and essayistic conventions in literary studies through a methodological turn away from the page."
We're always excited to see PennSound recordings being put to good use, and even more thrilled that the MP3 files are integrated within the body of the essay itself, allowing a seamless reading and listening experience. PennSound co-founder Al Filreis discusses Edmond's essay on his Jacket2 commentary page, highlighting a passage that discusses Brathwaite's poem "Negus," which he and Edmond, along with Amber Rose Johnson and Huda Fakhreddine, discussed in episode #149 of the PoemTalk podcast series. You can listen to that program here, browse our Brathwaite author page here, and read Edmond's essay here.
